“Oh, I know John Fiddes!” I brightened. “I knew him years ago.” Living as neighbours in West Vancouver, we had become friends. I had even cooked him the occasional roast-chicken dinner.
“He’s agreed to take on your file.”
“Okay.” I gnawed on my lip, not quite believing what was happening. I glanced over at the secretary who had threatened to leave and felt a pang. I’m sorry, I wanted to say.
“The Vancouver Police Department has advised us to take extra precautions about our personal security.”
“My God.” I have two young children at home. “I’ll talk to Dave.” I nodded, struggling to work through all the thoughts in my head. “William, I will talk to John first thing tomorrow morning. We will probably have to put off our court date, right?”
“Well, you and John should decide that. Both Gerald and I will make ourselves available to go over the files with him, but yes, I expect he needs some time to absorb all the material.” He pointed wryly to the legal files that pertained to my case. They had been brought out and placed in brown legal boxes, as if already waiting for the moving van. I left their offices in a daze.
After that, Dave stopped parking in underground car parks, and once again we hired a security company to watch the house from dusk till dawn when we were away. Although the police never came up with a culprit, William Morton and Gerald Reid had no more problems after they let me go.
The notice of motion asking for custody sparked one reaction I did expect. Eight-year-old Dash flew into the fray. His rage was swift, his hostility palpable on the phone. I tried to keep my nerve, but I was left shaking after each exchange. Even though I had spent three weeks persuading Dash to come on a ski weekend with us, he called the night before we were leaving and demanded to know if we were still going.
“I want an answer,” he snarled. “It’s simple, are we going to Whistler or not? Because I don’t want to go.”
“Okay, Dash. We’ll stay here, if that’s what you want.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Dash, I promise you. We’ll stay here.”
“I won’t come.”
And he didn’t.
Dash kept up his hostility and distance from me, and I kept trying to bridge it: I called, every day, telling him I wanted to see him, I loved him, I was there for him. When Peter wrote me a letter saying that Dash had decided he wouldn’t visit me until I called off my application, my resolve only grew firmer. This is sickness.
Dash retaliated still further. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t want you to come and pick me up on Friday,” he said angrily. “This is your warning. Goodbye.” Days later, Peter had a courier deliver a handwritten letter. “I will not be visiting until the custody stuff is over. Dash.” I panicked. Dash is in a worse position than ever. What am I doing? Whatever it was that Peter did to make Dash respond like that, to be able to say those things, terrified me. The cruelty seemed limitless. He was orchestrating and manipulating Dash in exactly the ways Norman Goodwell had predicted. Will pulling out of court stop it? Will anything change? I didn’t know. These thoughts preoccupied my days and nights. I would find myself doubting myself, adjusting my strategy, becoming exhausted, and wanting to rescind the whole thing. But in the end I knew things were never going to improve if I just kept taking notes and letting my child slip through my fingers into the unknown. So I didn’t pick up the phone and call my lawyer and pull out. I went instead to Bob Armstrong to let it all out, and continued to drive faithfully to Dash’s house each week to pick him up. He was never there and even my meagre phone conversations with him vanished. I knew I was hurting him, and I knew I was making things worse for him where he was, but as a parent I had to stay strong. I was the only one willing to bear the pain of helping him. I wouldn’t pull out.
Months passed.
The length of time I waited outside Peter’s house for Dash to appear depended on how strong I felt on the day. Five minutes, usually fifteen, now and then a half-hour. I watched the front door the whole time for my son to appear. I didn’t read. I rarely made phone calls. I just waited and watched, believing each time that Dash would soon come out and jump in my car. Sometimes I knocked on the door, a knot in my stomach in case Peter or Suzanne answered, but mostly I stayed in the car. It had been nearly four months since I had last seen Dash when one afternoon I knocked and got lucky. Rose answered and told me where he was — at the local community centre, playing floor hockey. I drove straight there with Colby and Quinten, and we went inside to find him. At a faceoff Dash looked up briefly and saw us, before he raced for the ball. We waved and cheered for him. Colby screamed, “Dash!” but he didn’t even look at us in between plays. Crushed that he could ignore us like that, I pushed it down as best I could and forged ahead. When the game finished, I stood up, gathered the boys, and walked over to intercept Dash as he came off the floor.
“Hi!” I said brightly. “It’s four o’clock. Time to come with us for the weekend.”
“No,” he said blankly. “I can’t.” Dash’s friends looked on in disbelief as he turned away from me and trudged off. I went after him, with Colby skipping along beside me, his hand grasping mine, Quin on my hip.
“Dash, please come with me,” I said softly. “Just for a few hours. You can bring your friends. I’ll make us all something yummy to eat. We’ll hang out. What do you think?” Dash didn’t stop walking, but he slowed right down as he passed my car. He didn’t turn around, but I leapt at the opportunity. I piled Colby into the car, fumbling with the car’s safety buckles, strapping Quin into his baby seat, and I didn’t stop talking. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. Why don’t you come with us for just a little while? Just for the afternoon. Dash? Just a couple of hours? We’ve got lots of things to show you: new photographs, toys, new games for the PlayStation. Will you come?”
Dash shook his head and, after a second’s pause, continued on his way. His back was hunched; his bag looked heavy and was dragging down his right shoulder. I wanted to take it from him. I wanted to take him away. I begged him to come. “Please, Dash. Please come with us. Please come.” I wanted to grab him and put him in the car and drive off, just to get him to our house with me. I knew he would melt there, he always did. But I wouldn’t force him. I wouldn’t give Peter another thing to rail against, and I wouldn’t put Dash under any more pressure. I had tried hard today, but it hadn’t worked. Colby began to cry, because tears were streaming down my face. When Dash disappeared, I leaned back on the car to wipe my face with the backs of my hands. I got in the car and pretended to the boys that I was fine. But I was devastated. I had totally failed to reach him. I was now someone this child was warned about: Don’t get in cars with strangers.
And yet Dash was never completely gone. That May, when the court application had been in for nearly six months and a court date was just around the corner, Dash and I had a conversation that was as fun and animated as any of our chats were, as any “normal” son and mother would have. We talked for ages, and I filled him in on what was happening in my world with Dave and Colby, Quin’s toddler antics, the last of our Whistler trips for the spring season, and our upcoming summer plans. Dash raved about his spring-break trip to Mexico, where he had boogie boarded and snorkelled with his friend Vecco. Our talk rolled in waves, flowing happily and spontaneously. Dash was excited to show me a video of him bungee jumping and, much as I cringed that he had been allowed to do such a thing, I never missed an opportunity to craft a connection and a visit.
“Dash, I wish I had seen your jump!”
“Mom, you would have loved it!”
“Would you bring over the video and let us watch?”
He went quiet immediately. “Soon,” he promised soberly. “I’ll come soon, Mom.”
When I saw the video, weeks later, the camera pulled back from a tight shot of Dash, who was concentrating hard on the instructor, to a wide shot that would capture Dash’s jump from the high platform. There in the corner of the shot w
as Peter, siting in a deck chair, reading. The camera stayed on the wide shot as Dash readied himself to jump, but Peter didn’t lift his head from his book, not once, not even as his son jumped off the platform with a rope tied to his legs. The image of neglect seared on my brain, and I saw it whenever I imagined Dash struggling with his homework or going off to a sleepover without a packed bag or to school without lunch. Maybe I was wrong. I wanted desperately to be. But I didn’t think I was.
The next week, Dash and I had another exuberant phone conversation, at the end of which we agreed to hang up on the count of three. It was something we used to do when he was a little boy, and when we did it that afternoon, I could tell he was smiling wide — as I was. Little things meant everything. As always, I had tried to arrange a day for Dash to be with me. “As soon as you’re ready. You know I’d love to see you.” Dash had replied immediately, “How about Monday?”
It was three days away. I sent Peter a fax, my usual method, telling him that Dash and I had spoken, had agreed to spend some time together the following Monday, and that I would be there to pick him up at half past three in the afternoon. Peter’s response, as I later learned, was to take Dash for an ad-hoc visit to Dr. Elterman. I wasn’t told. All I knew was that I was supposed to see Dash at half past three. After his session with Dr. Elterman, though, Dash wouldn’t dream of visiting me. Ignorant of the visit to Dr. Elterman, I bustled about that Monday, whipping up some of Dash’s favourite things, and just as I was upending the banana bread on racks to cool, Peter called. My shoulders slumped when I heard his voice. “I got your fax, but Dash hasn’t mentioned this visit,” he said. “I can’t imagine he’d want to see you, so I’m going to have to check it out.”
I sighed. “Okay, Peter. You do that.”
I patted the warm loaves absently while my heart sank. Dash isn’t coming. He hadn’t walked through our door for six months.
Two weeks later, at the end of May 1993, lawyers for both sides and Peter and I finally stood before Justice Donald Brenner for a fifteen-minute preliminary hearing. The judge expressed concern at the extent of the estrangement between Dash and me and his slipping progress at school. My friend Elizabeth MacKenzie had told me Dash had been placed in a special learning program at the school, because his reading and spelling were well below his grade level. Like earlier judges, Justice Brenner was concerned by my lack of information about Dash’s educational life, and immediately ordered Peter to hand over copies of all Dash’s report cards and school attendance records. (Peter would give me nothing for another three years. The one faxed report I had received from Peter just weeks earlier had the attendance portion mysteriously absent.)
I wanted to get a chunk of stipulated summer access from the preliminary hearing (which I got without a serious fight) and an order that Dash be psychologically evaluated. I wanted the judge to order an expert to spend time with Dash and sort out what he really felt. With a big sigh, Peter got up and explained that Dash didn’t need an evaluation — the estrangement between Dash and me had been caused by my “harassment” of the two of them. Dash had a perfect life in Peter’s home, and his regressions, strange behaviour, and moodiness at my home and at school were, variously, my fault (for not leaving Dash alone), the court’s fault (for allowing my frivolous custody application to be heard), and his teachers’ fault (for picking on Dash: “Why don’t you people just leave the kid alone?” Peter told them). With Peter’s strenuous denials and the wildly divergent stories he and I each told about the state of Dash’s life, the only way Dash was going to be evaluated and helped was if the court ordered it. Peter would never send Dash voluntarily. He claimed that “We don’t believe in psychologists,” but the truth was that having a psychologist assess Dash would uncover the true depths of his “bad life.” Dash had become hopelessly estranged from me on his father’s watch. So, despite the fact that Peter had whisked Dash off to see Dr. Elterman, upon Justice Brenner’s order that Dash be psychologically evaluated, Peter gave a theatrical lament, “I shudder to think what Dash’s reaction to this will be. I don’t think it’s going to be pleasant. When he hears of this he is going to be resentful, very resentful.”
We mustn’t upset Dash, we mustn’t get him angry. He’ll never visit her again if we upset him. Hush now. Don’t let him hear us talking about him. He’ll be mad. Who was this Dash that Peter thought he knew so well? Nine-year-old children don’t decide these things for themselves. I looked over at Peter briefly. What had he done to our child? And what more would he do?
“Well, then, Dr. Elterman should do it,” Peter said.
No! I wanted to slam my hands down on the bench seat. Anyone but him. My lawyer, John Fiddes, looked over at me with a hard expression. He knows it, too.
“Dr. Elterman knows the child. He’s done two reports,” Peter continued. “Justice Hood relied on Elterman’s first report in granting me interim sole custody, and our divorce trial judge, Justice MacDonald, relied on Elterman’s second report in granting me permanent sole custody. He knows the case and is the logical choice,” Peter said.
In desperation I looked at John, who stood up immediately and argued that Dr. Elterman had not been a balanced evaluator and that “fresh eyes are needed here.” When the judge said we should find a psychologist both sides could agree on, John offered up the name of Dr. Leslie Joy. Not many psychologists did court-ordered assessments, but she was qualified and available, and someone none of us had ever met. My heart beat wildly as I recognized the feeling of a court hearing starting to go my way. For perhaps twenty seconds my hope hung suspended in the air. Then Peter delivered his final blow. Speaking for the boy who had told me definitively after his first meeting with Elterman in 1989, “I don’t like that man,” Peter declared that Dash would refuse to see anybody but Dr. Elterman. “Dash,” Peter proclaimed, “trusts Elterman.”
My teeth were clenched to keep my jaw shut against what I wanted to say: The person who trusts Dr. Elterman, Peter, is you, not Dash.
“It is doubtful that Dash will speak to a stranger at this stage,” Peter continued. “It would be irresponsible and cruel to subject him to any such attempt, and it will likely be fruitless anyway, as we believe Dashiell will refuse to take part.”
Could the judge see what was happening here? Why would Dash care who he saw if it was court-ordered? He wasn’t even ten years old. It was Peter who didn’t want Dash to see anyone other than Dr. Elterman. After two court-ordered assessments and several ad-hoc meetings Peter could probably guarantee the outcome by now of any report Elterman did. The bias was entrenched. Dr. Joy was unknown and a risk. “Dash won’t see anyone else” meant “I won’t let Dash see anyone else.” Would the court sanction this manipulation? No, it didn’t. Whether he actually understood what was happening in his courtroom or not, Justice Brenner gave us the order we wanted: Dash was to see a psychologist for a full assessment, and the assessor was not to be Dr. Elterman.
Our first win.
In the end it didn’t matter what the judge had ordered, though, because the system gives people like Peter every loophole they need. Peter didn’t like the court order, so he simply ignored it. With no penalties, why not? Lack of consequences was the key to his success. School reports, attendance records, access, summer access — all had been mandated by judges and ignored. For the next month and a half Peter and his lawyers stonewalled us, ignoring my lawyer’s letters and delaying their own for days, refusing our requests for them to either agree to the appointment of Dr. Joy or to put forward other names. Every day was precious, but we got nothing. In early July, exasperated, we went back to Justice Brenner, who this time wrote a specific order: Peter was to get Dash forthwith to Dr. Leslie Joy for a full psychological evaluation, news I sailed along on for a couple of weeks — until Peter changed tack. He wrote to Dr. Joy and welcomed her to her task of “dealing with the reasons behind the child’s reluctance to visit.” My lawyer faxed me a copy of Peter’s letter and I stared at it blankly. What is he doing now? His voic
e filled with frustration, Dave deciphered it for me. “Christ, he’s trying to limit the inquiry, Pam. It will bring back a useless evaluation.”
In framing Dr. Joy’s role as he did, Peter started with the assumption (which he must have hoped the psychologist would take at face value) that Dash really was reluctant to visit, an assertion I had never believed. Dash’s “reluctance to visit” was the result of a bizarre home life that had encouraged him to dump his mother from his life. We needed the court’s “full psychological assessment” to be a thorough look at Dash’s home life and emotional health and the custodial arrangement as it related to it — not Peter’s truncated inquiry.
The shenanigans were a pain, and evidence to me of Peter’s continuing desire — and ability — to manipulate the legal proceedings; but hanging over me like a cloud was the one thing that distressed me more than anything else: Peter’s immersion of Dash directly in his battle with me. It was Dash won’t do this, Dash won’t do that. He had always been told far too much about the “court battle.” I had tried so hard to shield Dash, but Peter had submerged him. He was showing Dash all the court documents. All the affidavits, all the accusations. Though he publicly considered it “Dash’s right” to know, in my mind, focused through my work with Norman Goodwell, it was just another way he set up the black-and-white good parent/bad parent scenario that had been the signature of the past four years of Dash’s life.
Because Dash wasn’t with me enough, or free to see me as I was, and because I never spoke to him about what was happening between his parents, or in court, Dash got only his father’s story — his anguish, my betrayal. It kept Dash hyped and paranoid about me, maintaining a high level of hostility in their household. I was the villain; Peter was the benign knight looking out for his son. It was a made-up fantasy scenario, but their folie á deux relied on it. Dashy, you wouldn’t believe what she said in court today. She thinks you need to see a shrink! Well, don’t worry, son. I’ll get this all sorted out. Although positioning and involving the children is common in divorce, to me what Peter was doing was child abuse. Dash’s intimate knowledge of every letter, every legal document, the presence of process-servers, his father’s dinnertime rantings over the latest legal salvo, all immersed Dash and forced his loyalty vice ever tighter. It was only going to get worse from here. I had hoped, when Peter did it in front of Justice Brenner (“Dash will refuse to see anyone but Dr. Elterman”) that the judge would see it, but all he did was order Peter not to tell Dash about what was happening in court. Why would Peter discontinue something that worked so well for him? Now Dash was given a new locus for his torment: the order that he was to see a psychologist and spend two weeks with me over the summer.
A Kidnapped Mind Page 9